A YEAR OF 39BC
I’m not very good at celebrating. Maybe it’s eldest daughter overachievement syndrome — that state of being that means hard work, forward motion and hitting all your goals are to be expected, not rewarded. Maybe it’s just the whirlwind of work not allowing me time to breathe and reflect on how far we have come. Either way, when I said to the team, “We should celebrate our very first order,” or our first £100k of sales, or our first department store order, those milestones came and went without us even buying a cupcake to share.
But today we are one year old, and somehow that feels like a milestone worth pausing on.
When I started working on 39BC, I was still going through a personal transition. I was extremely burnt out, recovering from an episode of exhaustion that was physical as well as mental. That eldest daughter syndrome I mentioned? It meant I only rested for a little while before picking up my tools again to think about what was next.
I took those early steps very tentatively. I worked on multiple projects, testing and experimenting with different ideas, before 39BC — the idea of a fine-fragrance, historically led bathing brand — took hold of my attention.
It felt deeply rooted in the transition story of my life. It was really about slowing down, taking time for yourself and pausing to reflect and immerse.
The further we got into development, the more obsessed I became with it. Testing, crafting and perfecting our debut collection until, on August 29th 2025 at 11am, we told the world it existed.
From there, it’s been an incredible year. For the sake of posterity, let’s recap.
SEPTEMBER 2025
So September was spent launching our social channels, introducing the brand to press and staying in constant contact with our manufacturers to make sure everything would be ready on time. Although we went live at the end of August and you could pre-order, we weren’t actually ready to ship, so communicating and growing our audience from 0 was the main focus.
OCTOBER 2025
In October, we held our first press event. I think everyone expected us to do a dinner, but instead I chose to interview broadcaster and Egyptologist Dr Joann Fletcher at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology at UCL. We secured a small batch of samples to give to journalists and sent them away fully immersed in the story of 39BC, Antony and Cleopatra.
NOVEMBER 2025
We finally began shipping on November 10th, and many of you had been waiting months. Production started with SILK VEIL, followed by DENARII, FIG MILK and SAGE WATER a few weeks later. That gave us an extremely short window to secure Christmas sales.
But then we were featured on national TV! The nations favourite, Lorraine, tried FIG MILK live on air, causing a huge spike in sales and cementing FIG MILK as a bestseller.
Still in November, we planned our first pop-up, with a space generously gifted to us by Mason & Fifth in Westbourne Park. For a week, we created an immersive experience of scent, literature and bathing culture so that customers could see how we intended 39BC to show up IRL.
We also invited various retailers to visit. The beauty team at Selfridges came, and from there decided they wanted to become our launch department store partner.
DECEMBER 2025
Lots of form-filling and compliance ensued and, just one week before Christmas, we entered Selfridges.
And sold out pretty much immediately.
We ended the year on a high, with lots of VIP and corporate gifting orders coming through. We launched our first little piece of film content, which is still one of our most-viewed posts. I spent that Christmas feeling very much in flow and on the right path.
JANUARY 2026
In January, we launched our first hotel partnership with The Standard, London, offering a 39BC bathing ritual to guests staying in the suites.
And then we went to the US.
I’ve never truly launched a business in the US, which is, of course, a huge consumer market. Rather than put it off, I decided to dip my toe in by hosting a small gifting suite in New York at the stunning hotel The Manner, getting the products into the hands of some of my favourite tastemakers and beginning to understand how 39BC might live there. I also managed to squeeze in a visit to the final day of the Egypt exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
FEBRUARY 2026
In February, I went to Japan on a research trip for our next collection, experiencing onsen culture first-hand and visiting Buddhist temples. It was so inspiring! We also hosted our first dinner — a Valentine’s dinner at Selfridges and, in many ways, a very delayed celebration of our launch.
February ended with us launching in Dover Street Parfums Market, which was an absolute highlight for me. Comme des Garçons was my first experience of niche luxury perfume, so this really was a full-circle moment, as they say.
MARCH 2026
By the end of March, we had sold out online of our bestselling body wash, FIG MILK. We forecasted “perfectly”, but the war in the Middle East caused some production delays, meaning we were out of full-size stock for the next eight weeks, sending our customers scrambling to find it at our retail partners. That said, we still managed to launch at Koch Parfymeri in Norway, as well as some other brilliant independent retailers across the UK and Europe.
APRIL 2026
In April, we launched in Nigeria! This was a big moment for us, as I believe that to build a genuinely global brand, you must also go to the territories that are often underserved by the luxury market. SILK VEIL was the most popular scent in Lagos.
MAY 2026
By May, we finally launched the Discovery Set you’d all been asking for: all four scents in 100ml minis, perfect for travelling. We also launched with our first US retailer, denim brand AGOLDE on Melrose Place. I flew over for their launch party and had the best time with the team there. We also had FIG MILK live at goop, but by the time I arrived at the Brentwood store, it had sold out!
May 28th was my birthday and I spent it, of course, in the bath at Oakley Court.
JUNE 2026
In June, we did our first brand trip, taking a small group of creative men to Bather’s Cabin in Sussex. They spent the day in the sauna, cold plunge and natural pools before having a farm-to-table lunch.
June also saw the launch of 39BC in a whole host of new stores, including Babassu in the Netherlands and Boyner in Türkiye.
JULY 2026
In July, we hosted a collaboration for our customers with Hunza G, putting on a shopping evening and ensuring everyone was summer-ready with our travel minis. We also closed a funding round to fuel our growth for the next 12 months.
AUGUST 2026
And now it’s August.
We started the month producing a two-day shoot at Melton Hall to update our imagery for retailers and e-commerce, and we’ve been busy behind the scenes preparing everything for Christmas, including the launch of Perfumed Body Oil and gift sets.
But for the latter half of the month, we are taking a well-deserved rest, and I am writing this from Jamaica, where I am spending the final few days of summer.
I say rest, but in reality we are never not researching. Never not smelling, reading, watching and creating. Turning the wonderful stories and rituals we discover on our travels into cleansing products for the body and spirit.
When I look back at the year written down like this, I realise perhaps we have done quite a lot after all.
So today, I am going to try to do something I’m not very good at. I’m going to celebrate.
Thank you to everyone who has bought a bottle, told a friend, visited a pop-up, stocked us in your store, written about us, invited us into your hotel, sent us a message, shared a post or simply followed along.
Thank you to our team, our press team, manufacturers, our retailers, our investors, our collaborators and, most importantly, our customers for believing in this strange little idea about bringing the ancient history of bathing into the modern bathroom.
39BC is one year old.
And we are only just getting started.